Karabaş Veli Mosque

Known locally as Veledi Karabaş Camii, this mosque stands on Aynalı Bakkal Street near Mevlanakapı in Istanbul's Fatih district. It was commissioned by Hacı Mahmut Efendi, son of Şeyh Abdurrahman Efendi, the sheikh who had earlier founded the better-known Karabaş mosque at Hırka-i Şerif, which explains the shared name. No foundation inscription survives, but based on the probable lifetime of its patron, historians place its construction in roughly the second half of the seventeenth century. Its minbar was added later at the request of a woman named Topal Ayşe Hatun. Architecturally it is a simple rectangular building with a timber roof and walls of brick mixed with rubble stone, topped by a modest, plastered minaret with a lead-covered cap. After an initial repair under a patron named Sadık Efendi, Sultan Abdülhamid II had the mosque enlarged and restored in 1903 while preserving its original character.